CONCLUSIONS ON THE REPULSE OF THE SECOND ANTI-COMMUNIST ONSLAUGHT

May 8, 1941

[This inner-Party directive was written by Comrade Mao Tse-tung for the
Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.]

As the Central Committee's directive of March 18, 1941, has stated, the second
anti-Communist onslaught has come to an end. What has followed since is the
continuance of the War of Resistance Against Japan in new circumstances,
international as well as domestic. The additional factors in these new
circumstances are the spread of the imperialist war, the upsurge of the
international revolutionary movement, the neutrality pact between the Soviet
Union and Japan,[1] the defeat of the Kuomintang's
second anti-Communist onslaught and the consequent decline in the political
standing of the Kuomintang and rise in that of the Communist Party, and,
furthermore, the latest preparations by Japan for a new large-scale offensive
against China. It is absolutely necessary for us to study and learn the lessons
of our Party's heroic and victorious struggle against the recent anti-Communist
onslaught, for the purpose of uniting the people throughout the country to
persevere in the War of Resistance and for the purpose of continuing effectively
to overcome the danger of capitulation and the anti-Communist counter-current
of the big landlords and the big bourgeoisie.

1. Of China's two major contradictions, the national contradiction between
China and Japan is still primary and the internal class contradiction in
China is still subordinate. The fact that a national enemy has penetrated
deep into our country is all-decisive. As long as the contradiction between
China and Japan remains acute, even if the entire big landlord class and
big bourgeoisie turn traitor and surrender, they can never bring about another
1927 situation, with a repetition of the April 12th
[2] and the May 21st Incidents
[3] of that year. The first anti-Communist onslaught
[4] was appraised as another May 21st Incident
by some comrades, and the second onslaught as a repetition of the April 12th
and the May 21st Incidents, but objective facts have proved these appraisals
wrong. The mistake of these comrades lies in forgetting that the national
contradiction is the primary one.

2. In the circumstances, the pro-British and pro-American big landlords and
big bourgeoisie, who direct all Kuomintang government policy, remain classes
with a dual character. On the one hand they are opposed to Japan, and on
the other they are opposed to the Communist Party and the broad masses of
the people represented by the Party. And both their resistance to Japan and
their anti-communism bear a dual character. With regard to their resistance
to Japan, while they are opposed to Japan, they are not actively waging war
or actively opposing Wang Ching-wei and the other traitors, and sometimes
they even flirt with Japan's peace emissaries. With regard to their
anti-communism, they are opposed to the Communist Party, having gone so far
as to create the Southern Anhwei Incident and to issue the Order of January
17, but at the same time they do not want a final split and still maintain
their stick-and-carrot policy. These facts have been confirmed once again
in the recent anti-Communist onslaught. Chinese politics, which are extremely
complex, demand our comrades' deepest attention. Since the pro-British and
pro-American big landlords and big bourgeoisie are still resisting Japan
and are still using the stick and carrot in dealing with our Party, the policy
of our Party is to "do unto them as they do unto
Us",[5] stick for stick and carrot for carrot.
Such is the revolutionary dual policy. So long as the big landlords and the
big bourgeoisie do not completely turn traitor, this policy of ours will
not change.

3. A whole range of tactics is needed to combat the Kuomintang's anti-Communist
policy, and there must be absolutely no carelessness or negligence. The enmity
and brutality of the big landlords and the big bourgeoisie represented by
Chiang Kai-shek towards the people's revolutionary forces were not only
demonstrated by the ten years of anti-Communist war, but they have been fully
demonstrated in the midst of the war against Japan by two anti-Communist
onslaughts, and particularly by the Southern Anhwei Incident during the second
anti-Communist onslaught. If a people's revolutionary force is to avoid
extermination by Chiang Kai-shek and to compel him to acknowledge its existence,
it has no alternative but to wage a tit-for-tat struggle against his
counter-revolutionary policies. The defeat resulting from Comrade Hsiang
Ying's opportunism during the recent anti-Communist onslaught should serve
as a grave warning to the whole Party. But the struggle must be waged on
just grounds, to our advantage, and with restraint; if any of the three is
lacking, we shall suffer setbacks.

4. In the struggle against the Kuomintang die-hards, the big comprador
bourgeoisie must be distinguished from the national bourgeoisie, which has
little or no comprador character, and the most reactionary big landlords
must be distinguished from the enlightened gentry and the general run of
landlords. This is the theoretical basis of our Party's endeavour to win
over the intermediate sections and establish organs of political power on
the "three thirds system", and it has been repeatedly stressed by the Central
Committee since March last year. Its correctness was proved afresh during
the recent anti-Communist onslaught. The stand we took before the Southern
Anhwei Incident, as expressed in our November 9
telegram,[6] was entirely necessary for our shift
to the political counter-attack after the incident, otherwise we could not
have won over the intermediate sections. For unless they had been taught
time and again by experience, the intermediate sections would have been unable
to understand why our Party must wage resolute struggles against the Kuomintang
die-hards, why unity can be gained only through struggle and why there can
be no unity whatsoever if struggle is abandoned. Although the leading elements
in the regional power groups belong to the big landlord class and the big
bourgeoisie, generally they should also be regarded and treated as intermediate
sections, since there are contradictions between them and the big landlords
and big bourgeois who control the central government. Yen Hsi-shan who was
most active in the first anti-Communist onslaught took a middle stand in
the second, and although the Kwangsi clique which took a middle stand in
the first onslaught came in on the anti-Communist side in the second, it
is still in contradiction with the Chiang Kai-shek clique and not to be
identified with it. This applies with still greater force to other regional
power groups. Many of our comrades, however, still lump the different landlord
and bourgeois groups together, as though the entire landlord class and
bourgeoisie had turned traitor after the Southern Anhwei Incident, this is
an over-simplification of China's complex politics. Were we to adopt this
view and identify all the landlords and the bourgeoisie with the Kuomintang
die-hards, we would isolate ourselves. It must be realized that Chinese society
is big in the middle and small at both ends [7]
and that the Communist Party cannot solve China's problems unless it wins
over the masses of the intermediate classes and unless it enables them to
play their proper role according to their circumstances.

5. Because some comrades have wavered on the point that the contradiction
between China and Japan is the primary one and hence have wrongly appraised
class relations in China, they have at times wavered on the policy of the
Party. Proceeding from their appraisal of the Southern Antwei Incident as
another April 12th or May 21st Incident, these comrades
now seem to think that the Central Committee's policy directive of December
25 last year is no longer applicable, or at least not altogether applicable.
They believe that we no longer need the kind of state power that includes
all who stand for resistance and democracy but need a so-called state power
of the workers, peasants and urban petty bourgeoisie, and that we no longer
need the united front policy of the period of the War of Resistance but need
a policy of agrarian revolution as during the ten years' civil war. The Party's
correct policy has become blurred in the minds of these comrades, at any
rate for the time being.

6. When these comrades were instructed by the Central Committee of our Party
to be prepared against a possible split by the Kuomintang, that is, against
the worst possible development, they forgot the other possibilities. They
do not understand that while it is absolutely necessary to prepare for the
worst possibility, this does not mean ignoring the favourable possibilities;
on the contrary, such preparation for the worst is precisely a condition
for creating favourable possibilities and turning them into reality. On this
occasion, we were fully prepared against a split by the Kuomintang, and so
the Kuomintang dared not bring about a split lightly.

7. There are even more comrades who fail to understand the unity of the national
struggle and the class struggle, and who fail to understand united front
policy and class policy, and consequently the unity of united front education
and class education. They hold that after the Southern Anhwei Incident special
emphasis should be placed on class education as distinct from united front
education. Even now they do not understand that for the whole period of the
anti-Japanese war the Party has a single integral policy--the national united
front policy (a dual policy) which integrates the two aspects, unity and
struggle--towards all those in the upper and middle strata who are still
resisting Japan, whether they belong to the big landlord class and big
bourgeoisie or the intermediate classes. This dual policy should be applied
even to the puppet troops, the traitors and the pro-Japanese elements, except
for those who are absolutely unrepentant, whom we must resolutely crush.
The education which our Party conducts among its own members and the people
in general likewise embraces both these aspects, that is, it teaches the
proletariat and the peasantry and other sections of the petty bourgeoisie
how to unite, in different ways, with the different strata of the bourgeoisie
and the landlord class for resistance to Japan, and at the same time how
to conduct struggles against them in varying degrees according to the varying
degrees in which they compromise, vacillate and are anti-Communist. United
front policy is class policy and the two are inseparable; whoever is unclear
on this will be unclear on many other problems.

8. Other comrades do not understand that the social character of the
Shensi-Kansu-Ningsia Border Region and the anti-Japanese base areas in northern
and central China is already new-democratic. The main criterion in judging
whether an area is new-democratic in character is whether representatives
of the broad masses of the people participate in the political power there
and whether this political power is led by the Communist Party. Therefore,
united front political power under Communist leadership is the chief mark
of a new-democratic society. Some people think that New Democracy can be
considered as accomplished only if there is an agrarian revolution like that
of the ten years' civil war, but they are wrong. At present the political
system in the base areas is a political system of the united front of all
the people who are for resistance and democracy, the economy is one from
which the elements of semi-colonialism and semi-feudalism have been basically
eliminated, and the culture is an anti-imperialist and anti-feudal culture
of the broad masses of the people. Therefore, whether viewed politically,
economically or culturally, both the anti-Japanese base areas which have
only enforced the reduction of rent and interest and the Shensi-Kansu-Ningsia
Border Region which has gone through a thorough agrarian revolution are
new-democratic in character. When the example of the anti-Japanese base areas
is extended throughout the country, then the whole of China will become a
new-democratic republic.

NOTES

1. The neutrality pact between the Soviet Union and Japan,
concluded on April , 1941, ensured peace on the eastern border of the Soviet
Union, thus crushing the plot for a joint German, Italian and Japanese attack
on the Soviet Union. It marked a major victory for the Soviet Union's peaceful
foreign policy.

2. The April 12th Incident was the counter-revolutionary
coup d'etat staged by Chiang Kai-shek in Shanghai on April 12, 1927, during
which a great number of Communists and revolutionary workers, peasants and
students and intellectuals were massacred.

3. Instigated by Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Ching-wei, the
counter-revolutionary Kuomintang army commanders in Hunan, including Hsu
Keh-hsiang and Ho Chien, ordered a raid on the provincial headquarters of
the trade unions, the peasant associations and other revolutionary organizations
in Changsha on May 21, 1927, Communists and revolutionary workers and peasants
were arrested and killed en masse. This signalized the open collaboration
of the two counter-revolutionary Kuomintang cliques, the Wuhan clique headed
by Wang Ching-wei and the Nanking clique headed by Chiang Kai-shek.

4. The first anti-Communist onslaught during the anti-Japanese
war was conducted by Chiang Kai-shek in the winter of 1939 and the spring
of 1940.

5. The quotation is from the commentary by Chu Hsi
(1130--1200), a philosopherof the Sung Dynasty, on the Confucian
Doctrine of the Mean, Chapter 13.

6. The telegram of November 9, 1940 was sent by Chu Teh
and Peng Teh-huai, Commander-in-Chief and Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the
Eighteenth Group Army (Eighth Route Army), and Yeh Ting and Hsiang Ying,
Commander and Deputy Commander of the New Fourth Army, in reply to the telegram
of the Kuomintang generals Ho Ying-chin and Pai Chung-hsi, dated October
19, 1940. Exposing the plot by the Kuomintang reactionaries to attack the
Communist Party and capitulate to Japan, they denounced Ho Ying-chin's and
Pai Chung-hsi's absurd proposal that the New Fourth Army and the Eighth Route
Army should shift from the south to the north of the Yellow River. However,
in a spirit of conciliation and compromise for the sake of maintaining unity
against Japan, they agreed to shift their forces from the south to the north
of the Yangtse River, while demanding the solution of a number of major
outstanding issues between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. The telegram
won the sympathy of the intermediate sections and served to isolate Chiang
Kai-shek.

7. Comrade Mao Tse-tung's remark about Chinese society
means that the Chinese industrial proletariat which led the revolution formed
only a minority of China's population, as did also the reactionary big landlords
and big bourgeoisie.